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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8502164" data-attributes="member: 82106">As an example of the questions this sort of thing raises, in the original version of HoML things were pretty close to 4e in structure. PCs and NPCs would make checks, and the DVs of these checks would, in the case of an attack, be one of the FORT/REF/WILL defenses. This was symmetrical, and it doesn't really engage the fiction all that much, as each participant can select a power and carry out their attack, and perhaps sometimes a reaction is triggered.I thought it would be more engaging to move all the rolls to the player side, which is not all that difficult, you just have the player roll a defense check and make NPCs attacks carry a DV they must meet, and their 'defenses' simply become bonuses to the check. But then it seemed like if you go that far, why not make it a bit more interactive and here we have an opportunity to reference the fiction more directly. That is, why not let the player pick a defense? They have to do so with reference to the fiction however. This is a lot like the way DW characters might use Defy Danger to avoid some kind of attack. Now ANYTHING becomes game to be a 'defense', and you don't even need the 3 canonical ones anymore.There is a problem buried in this though, what really motivates the player not to just say "oh, I dodge" every time? Now, maybe the FICTION of the form of the attack is a constraint here, but it is often going to be a weak one. Every time an orc attacks the rogue "I dodge", orcs typically attack with weapons of some sort, and its hard to see a fiction that doesn't allow for a dodge (maybe we can come up with some, and maybe doing so is an answer to this, make more interesting monsters). This whole 'rightward arrow' thing gets fairly tricky! Games like 4e that have a lot of D&D-ish legacy seem like they particularly struggle with this. I mean, I could just write a PbtA variant that would probably deal easily with this issue as it wouldn't use something like turn-based combat. DW for example enforces fiction as the starting place for all action simply by not providing any other possible source for it!</blockquote>

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